Shelter Animal Count: Data 

Jan 2020 - Sept 2023

Shelter Animal Count 2020-Sept 2023

Halifax Humane Society has one overarching vision, to create a set of programs that will end the number one killer of pets, displacement. At its core, Halifax Humane Society staff shares the belief that fingers should not be pointed, that not one shelter, not one person is responsible for the killing of pets. The displacement of animals is a social problem, and so long as it exists, the cause of death should matter as much as the source, otherwise, history will continue to repeat itself. Our vision is not a "quick fix" to improve the numbers of our shelter in the short term, we aim instead to solve the long-term problems of our community as a whole.

Currently, Halifax Humane Society is changing history. In the past 8 years, Halifax Humane Society has made some magnificent changes to increase adoptions, keep pets in their original homes, change legislation, open pet-friendly homes, reduce behavior issues, address emergencies, educate children, and much more. The Halifax Humane Society Board, volunteers, and staff have done this while taking the hard road, accepting every animal that comes to their door.

Many organizations achieved "no-kill" status early by simply restricting intake, bringing red-rope policies to organizations that should be accepting the most difficult cases, not avoiding them. Halifax Humane Society feels that refusing to take in any animal will only confound and further hurt our mission, and the hundreds of thousands of pets that will be displaced in the future with nowhere else to go.

We are proud to show our constantly improving trends as we seek to uphold our mission of servicing every animal that comes to our door. Between our two clinics, Halifax Humane Society performs over 10,000 low-cost pet sterilizations a year, our legislative programs are making Volusia County more pet-friendly than ever.

Halifax Humane Society (HHS) has attained a Live Release Rate (LRR) of 90% or greater monthly since January 2020. Though we try to keep our distance from divisive terminology, this accomplishment qualifies us as a “no-kill” shelter. Although euthanasia was performed 424 times in 2020, all procedures resulted from an animal being terminally ill (i.e., leukemia), injured beyond saving (i.e., hit by a motor vehicle), or judged to be behaviorally unstable and thus, unadoptable without placing people and other animals in harm’s way. Attaining a no-kill status is challenging for any shelter, much less a shelter like ours that continues to be an open-admission shelter and never turning away any animal in need.

For 2021 using the Asilomor calculation the save rate for Halifax Humane Society was 93.53%. In 2022 the LRR is 93.94%.